I came out of the subway train and the doors closed behind my back. The crowd pushed for the stairwell and the escalator to the surface. I boosted the volume on my CD player to block off any noise and dove into the crowd.
The headphones pounded hard in my ears with the rhythm of the music. I pressed on. Think what you want, you people of the morning crowd. Think that I am an idiot who decided to kill his own ears. Think that I am a crazy nerd who listens to silly music that noone listens to anymore, music whose lyrics are naive as they are absurd. Think that I am trying to show off my amazing song collection to you.
I’ve done stupid things. Horrible things. Things I didn’t want to remember. I have treated HER bad. I was wrong. I knew I was wrong at the time I did those things. I knew I would regret them. But I did them anyway. And I regretted my actions just like I knew I would. I spent hours staring at myself in the mirror. I kept telling myself it was not me. The fool.
Now I had something to be happy about. I had done the impossible. I had done something that I thought made a difference between a boy and a man. I had reversed time. I had repaired holes in the ship of my life. I was running… No, flying up the stair faster than the people walking up the escalator and the music pounded hard in my ears. It brought me joy. I was ready to live my life, the renewed old life I used to have. I thought about HER.
I was thinking about HER so much that I didn’t notice how I bumped into a friend of mine. I passed him by without taking much heed at the stranger. I always walked fast. Only when a hand landed on my shoulder did I look back and saw a familiar face.
“Hey! What’s up Eric?” I exclaimed.
I shook his hand. His handshake wasn’t firm. It has never been. Maybe Eric never liked to shake hands with his friends. Why not? Wasn’t he happy to see me? I could never understand. Once I met him on the bus, going home. I was happy and surprised to see him. I’ve never known he took the same bus as me. I was so happy that I wouldn’t be on that bus alone that I shook his hand, eventhough we’ve never done that before. I realized then that the world was divided into people that shook hands firmly and people that made you think you would crush their hand. Ironically I have never known which side have I belonged to.
A guy I’ve never seen before walked by Eric’s side. He face was strangely familiar.
“This is my buddy, Hank,” Eric said.
“Hey, I am Michael,” I shook his hand. His handshake was firmer than Eric’s. “Where are you from?”
“
“Ah, so you are new to this University?”
“Yes.”
“What are you studying?”
“I am in the medical school.”
“Ooh nice! So you are gonna be a doctor or something?”
“Yeah, I hope so.”
“Well believe me this is the best university in the world.”
“Oh yeah?” he looked around. “Why, what are you studying?”
“I am in computer science.” I replied. I put my hand onto my chest. “My job is staring at that screen for hours and digging up crazy numbers. You like calculus?”
“Not really. I am taking it right now. I think it’s the most boring thing ever. I don’t even think I need to take it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s calculus, man! What’s there to tell?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. Integrals?”
“Don’t even start that, man!” suddenly put in Eric. Only now I noticed that all this time he kept silent. “I hated that class.”
“Ha-ha! I am sorry.” I laughed hard. “But calculus is in my blood.”
“Yeah,” sighed Hank. “I’ll tell you one thing. You do have a kind of intellectual look to you. You know what I mean?”
“Is that because I am wearing glasses?” I asked and laughed again. “People have called me Harry Potter before. By the way, your face looks strangely familiar.”
“I know, eh?” Eric exclaimed. “He looks like George Clooney.”
We were ascending a small stairwell making our way through a courtyard to the heart of the university campus. Ah, George Clooney, the biggest and manliest actor of our time. Charming and sweet, charming and sweet.
“Wow it’s true!” I yelled. “You totally have his voice. You have his looks too, but the voice is just pure identical. At this rate half the university’s hottest girls will soon be yours.”
He brightened up at that.
“I’ll tell you something though.” I went on. “The one thing you will notice with this university is that you will have many older people in your class. My girlfriend is two years older than me.”
He stared at me. He did not blink. He face looked astonished. And no wonder. Only one question rattled in his George Clooney head now.
How?
How was it possible that a wimp such as myself could have a girlfriend?
That’s right, Mr. Clooney. What good are all your charms and your deep voice when even people like me have long moved on in life? And not only that. How was it possible that his entire perception of prevailing traits in the male species was so wrong? Have you not been thinking of me as a typical nerd just now, Mr. Clooney?
I hated that. All my life I hated to be seen as a loser, an ineffectual and insignificant player in his game of life. I knew too well that has only been me. I couldn’t help but believe in my own inferiority, unwillingly, reluctantly. But I couldn’t miss that astonished look in Hank’s eyes that spoke more than he could ever say. And I couldn’t help but triumph in this one moment of glory.
What glory?
I lied. I never had a girlfriend. It was HER that I have been referring to. And I wasn’t even sure if we were friends. Not after all that had happened. Of course I told him nothing. As I walked alone to my class I thought to myself that maybe it is good, to lie sometimes. I knew I was wrong. Partially because sadness came back over me when reality resurfaced.
I lied. Hank and I would become good friends. He believed me, the guy who looked like George Clooney. He was full of respect towards me. He realized the mistake in his perception. He would start seeing the world in new sharper colours as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice cold water onto his head.
“I don’t understand,” I have already been on the phone with HER for an hour.
“Do you want to have a serious talk?” SHE suddenly said.
“Yes, absolutely.” I then felt tired.
“I can give you what you want, but later. You have to give me time.” SHE said.
Silence. I felt my heart stop. Not the most pleasant of all feelings.
“I don’t understand.”
Silence. I didn’t understand. Then she spoke.
“You and I, we can hang out still. I want us to be friends again. Friends, like the ones we were before all the silliness.”
“What silliness?”
Silence.
“What silliness? I don’t understand.”
Silence. I suddenly had a disturbing thought. I’ve had that thought many, many times before but this time it clung to me like a piece of statically charged foam. It was like putting a missing gear into a broken clock. It all made sense! No, I thought, it can’t be true.
“Are you in love with someone else?” I didn’t recognize my own voice.
Silence. This time I felt HER heart stop. The MOST unpleasant of all feeling.
I lied. Hank would find that I lied. He would find it exactly two days later. But he would still be my friend. We would be even more so, them friends. So what if I lied? Maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe he was right, I was a loser, and the only reason I had ever said anything about HER and US was to help myself believe in something different. Even if it was a lie, a scary lie, a lie that would almost kill me. It was at the time a little bit true because I believed it. Maybe that was all that mattered.
(c) 2007, Mikhail Temkine
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